Friday, July 20, 2012

Gaza Field Visits

Terry comes home tonight! So I'm going to post another of his e-mail reports. This is a really long one (although Terry described it as a "quick note") but I found his descriptions of visiting farmers and WV projects in Gaza really fascinating, a little glimpse into another world. I wish I'd sent the camera along with him!

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Overall, it was a fun day – not least because I got to go
out of the hotel grounds, but also because I like hanging with farmers and
chatting over coffee or tea.

So in the morning, I was picked up and after a quick office
stop, we went out to visit some projects.The security situation here is a little amped up so before I pop out to
visits, the Office Security officer has to vet the area I am going to visit and
see if there’s been any “activity” (usually Israeli incursions or
bombing).I was told that this
morning on the east side of Gaza, there had been an incursion with tanks and a
micro-bus was shot at – a Palestinian was killed and two were injured.It was sort of treated by the staff as
“just another day at the office” – although the one M&E officer (the woman)
was a little upset about a Palestinian being killed (again).Anyway, the areas we were going to
visit were evidently okay, so we set off.

More protocol is that any outsiders (me) have to be
accompanied by a driver and a security officer and only travel in a WV
dedicated vehicle.So in addition
to my guide (the M&E officer for the ADP – a woman named Hajar who is
really good), I had the driver and a security officer.They were kind of bored with the site
visits – they aren’t really into programming stuff – so it was funny to see
them kind of lolling around complaining about the heat and the farms and stuff.

So this cavalcade set off.The first visit was to a farmer who had had his greenhouse
repaired by WV after it had been bombed by an Israeli incursion during the
war.The farmers here are pretty
good.The issues in Gaza aren’t
like campesinos from the highlands
settling in the selva or trying to do
some micro-enterprise by getting people who’ve never gardened to do good
gardening.Rather, their approach
is that the technical knowledge is present in the people, but the
infrastructure keeps getting trashed by the bombing and war.Replace the infrastructure and people
will be okay.

So, for example, the first farmer we visited was part of a
family of 5 brothers who managed 14 greenhouses of the nylon plastic and steel
pipe variety.They grew melons,
tomatoes, cucumbers, and legumes in a rotating cycle.Their grandfather had started the greenhouses, was passed on
to their father, and now they were running it.So it wasn’t like they were starting new.It was interesting talking to the
farmer.He talked about how he
experiments a bit each year by taking a single row of plants in his greenhouse
and planting something new – to see how the production is.If it works well in a single row, then
he may expand it to his whole greenhouse in the cycle of plants they do.

Across the street his uncle had a potato farm and their big
storehouse reminded me of the Phelps farm (except not cold).

The farms here are interesting because they are not really
“rural” in the sense that we might think of farms – 1.5 million people live in
Gaza strip.The farms are more
like 1-3 acre plots mixed around inside the city.So in our first visit, it looked like we were in a
neighborhood, turn a corner, and there are a bunch of greenhouses tucked away
on a back alley.

The second visit was a farming family that was doing citrus
trees.Again, they had been
farmers for a long while back, had had a greenhouse, but it was an old style
greenhouse, not as efficient, so they converted to Citrus about 7 years
ago.WV helped them with some
pruning and cleaning processes after the war when the trees had been sprinkled
with phosphorus or something.Their little farm was located in a rather nice neighborhood, shady with
modestly nice houses.I had asked
about whether this was a nicer section of town and they said that this
neighborhood was comprised of people who had used to work in Israel before all
the blockade and war and they had earned pretty good salaries as workers.The houses date from that time.I think the family we visited was one
of those that had had a worker in Israel who was forced back.So the farm which had been a
supplemental source of income became the primary source – causing a pinch.

The house was a pretty big villa type, but there were four
families living in it now – the grandfather couple, their four children
(married families) and the grandchildren.They Gazans are interesting because they look working class, but there’s
all this education rolling around in the background.So for example, the lead farmer we were talking to had
gotten degrees at the university in Economics and Political Science and three
of the grandchildren were enrolled in university.

The impression I get is that this is an area that really
goes against the archetype of “development” as progress from the noble savage
to modern man, etc.In reality,
it’s a place that had a strong professional core, a solid foundation of
farmers, a good university system, and a highly educated populace who have all
been affected by the various wars and incursions and subsequent infrastructure
destruction.In one sense, what
this means is that there’s a much better chance than in many places that
“development” might actually work – meaning development as articulated through
the Marshall Plan foundation.

At this second family, we drank a mint tea that was super
strong and super sweet.Tasted
great.

The third site visit was a children’s center that had been
started by 23 university grads who were trained in social work or children’s
education and had gotten tired of working for NGOs or who weren’t happy with
the lack of a children’s center.So about three years ago, this cohort all chipped in on volunteer basis
and started their own children’s center.Everyone is a volunteer there and they have about 600 kids that come to
the center – spread out into various shifts since they don’t have much space. It was interesting just how empowered
the kids acted though.We sat down
with about 6-8 kids who were excited, talked directly to Hajar and made direct
eye contact.You could see they
were feeling their rights.It was
pretty cool.I don’t know how long
the center can last on purely volunteer basis, but it’s rather inspiring to see
these young people put the time into the center.They all work elsewhere and this is their volunteer time.For example, the manager of the center
is a young guy about 28 who works at the Italian embassy or consulate.He was going to go to work at 3:00
after spending the morning at the center.We were only given water to drink.

One side note about the women here – Gaza is a conservative
Muslim context and all of the women wear the headscarves and the flowing long
sleeved robes – usually black.It’s also not that unusual to see the total burka look.But what has struck me is how even with
this conservative dress, the women aren’t particularly subservient or
submissive.Maybe it’s just the
group I have interacted with, but the women will speak up, don’t act
subservient around the men and will sort of hang out and chat casually with the
men.The ones I met are also
highly educated – university degrees and such.So that may be part of it, but still – it feels different
from the horror stories about gender relationships you hear out of places like
Afghanistan or Pakistan.Maybe the
key difference is that this is a population that had all been educated –
including the women.I don’t
know.Maybe more will emerge over
the next few days.

The last visit was to a CBO that is a sports club for deaf
young people.It was started in
2005 after the Athens Special Olympics and has about 250 deaf members who come
to the center to play different sports – including soccer.This club just started a beachside café
to help generate income for the club but to also give the deaf youth some
opportunities for employment and training.So we sat in the shade on the beach watching the waves do
wavey things and chatted with the youth and the board members of the club.I had asked about the profitability of
the café and they admitted that it wasn’t really generating much profit, but it
has gotten a LOT of publicity and it’s been great for the deaf youth to be able
to run the café and learn business skills.They said a lot of families with disabled members will come
to this particular beachside café because they now consider it “theirs” – even
the ones who aren’t members in the club.

It sort of looks like Gazans do the beach scene.There are all these kiosks of bamboo
and thatch up and down the beach with beach umbrellas and food and so
forth.My host told me that there
used to be actual resorts and hotels along the beach, but during the war, these
were all bombed and bulldozed by the Israelis to prevent them being used as
bases for incursions – so now people just built everything from bamboo and
thatch with netting because it’s easier to rebuild after a bombing.

One twist is that there are these little cubicles set up
along the beach about 3 meters on a side, made of burlap and open to the
sky.I was told that families will
come to the beach – usually in the cool of the day after noon - and rent one of
these cubicles.The purpose of the
cubicles is so that the women of the family can have privacy and can take off their
robes and headscarves and eat at the beach.The young people hang out in the public area together, but
these cubicles are the for the families and especially the married women.We saw a family come down and rent one
of those.There were about 12 people
or so ranging from grandfather to uncles to aunts to little kids.They’d brought their own food in big
baskets and they set up shop around one of the cubicles.The men sort of lounged around outside
while the women hung around inside and the kids ran back and forth.There was one little kid about
Gabriel’s age toddling around with his 7 or 8 year old sister and it made me go
“awwww”.

We were there longer than I expected because they offered to
get us some lunch – cooked by the deaf youth – “it will only take a half-hour,
very fast” – ha ha – 2 hours later we were served.It was great food though – the chicken was grilled and
blackened with cloves making a really interesting flavor.Then there were the usual suspects –
humus and pita bread, tarator, and other dipping sauces.If we ever move to Gaza, you’d better
love humus.The beginning of every
meal is a bowl of humus and a pile of pita bread which is ripped and dipped in
the humus.

By the time I got back to the hotel, it was about 3:30 or
so.By this time, I was pretty hot
and salty from sitting at the beach for two hours (under a shade, but still)
and so took a shower, and then tried to slog through the rest of the dark
teatime of the soul.